


all exits look the same

by SHCombatalade



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 2012 is the past, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Law Enforcement, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Back to the past, Deliberate acronyms, Gen, Ghost roommate, Health freak Bucky, M/M, jewel thieves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-01-19 20:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1482844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SHCombatalade/pseuds/SHCombatalade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“A... a ghost.” He repeats it, more to himself, in disbelief – all this lead up, all this mystery, the man in his bathroom and the five months of not knowing and questioning his sanity every time he opened his eyes, all of that for someone to spell out, literally spell out, what he already knew? It’s not that he’s disappointed, not really, it’s just that he was expecting a little bit more of a climactic revelation. A little less spelling, too, but what can you expect from a guy employed by an equally acronymed organization?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He moves in to a two-bedroom townhouse in a quiet neighborhood – open floor plan, decent backyard, quiet cul-de-sac. The neighbors are quiet, which he enjoys, but friendly. He tries to appreciate the constant questions after his well-being, the daily dinners and offers for Sunday brunches, but less than a month and he’s already feeling smothered by it.

He settles into a routine of sorts – it’s not the strict minute-by-minute of his military days, not anymore, but it’s more than dirty sweatpants and eighteen hour Netflix binges. He wakes in the morning, nearly the same time every day. Earlier than he needs to, later than he used to; the doctors have been telling him about middle ground, easing him back into civilian life – apparently his middle ground is 6:35am. He goes walking. First just the cul-de-sac, a few laps and he’s winded already, but time passes and he explores the neighborhood. Later, he runs. He gets stronger with each mile of pavement.

He goes to his appointments, talks to his doctor – PTSD, she tells him, and garden variety depression, and she suggests that maybe talking to her, _really_ talking to her, might help. But he can’t find the words to describe how he’s not sad, not really, he just feels like the world doesn’t fit anymore. His old clothes hadn’t fit either, too narrow at the waist and too snug in the thighs. He doesn’t know how to explain that it’s not that he can’t sleep, it’s just that he’s too distracted by pillows and blankets and soft sheets and it’s quiet and he can’t handle that. One day, he gets out of the shower and slips into an old t-shirt, one from before; the sleeves are too tight but it fits in the chest, and it gets easier to breathe. He sleeps better after that, and slowly the world starts to feel right.

He gets a job, sort of – it doesn’t pay, not in money, but he drives home feeling lighter than he does when he wakes up every morning. He’s _helping_. Purpose smoothes the final rough edges of his newfound suburban life, and everything after that just sort of slots into place. Six months in and he finally, _finally_ feels like maybe he’s got his life under control.

Right around then, everything gets crazy.

* * *

He’s in the kitchen, adding pasta to boiling water, when the television in the living room turns on.

At first he shrugs it off as a glitch in the wiring, a goof from the neighbor’s remote; he’s not exactly rolling in disposable income right now, and the television is one of those less-than-modern craigslist finds. It’s possible, probable even, that it’s simply broken.

The television flips through channels before settling on the Food Network.

* * *

Three days later and he bolts awake to darkness, hands groping beneath the pillow for a gun that isn’t there. He glances at the clock, red numbers flashing and it’s just past midnight; he’s been asleep for forty minutes.

The shower is running.

Sliding from bed, still in his jeans because some things just do not change – or if they do, they take longer than six months – his hand tightens its grip on the baseball bat he keeps beside the bed. The door to the bathroom is shut, but there’s a sliver of light underneath. When he pulls the door open, bat brandished and ready to strike, he finds an empty room, the water running in an empty stall and he scrubs at his eyes and wonders if he’s gone crazy.

He goes back to bed, cold and confused, and wakes up two hours before his alarm.

* * *

The television never turns on after 10pm.

He’s never sure during the day, first his run then his appointment and then group, but he knows with one hundred percent certainty that the television stays off whenever he tries to sleep. The first few weeks he’d been alarmed, finally unplugging the thing and strongly considering tossing it with the rest of the garbage, but slowly, like everything else, he’d acclimated to the quiet background noise. It generally stayed on the Food Network when he cooked, History Channel when he read or surfed the internet – the volume would lower respectfully whenever the phone rang.

Two months in with the phantom television, he sits on the couch and asks an empty apartment “So, how ‘bout a movie?”

After a moment’s pause, the television switches over to TNT.

* * *

At first, he’d been terrified.

He’d called his doctor in a panic, throat tight and head spinning and _desperate_ for an answer – I’m going crazy, he tells her as soon as the line connects. I’m crazy, I’m crazy, I’m crazy. I’m seeing things and hearing things and I’m losing time.

The CAT scan came back normal, and television and shower both stayed off for three whole days.

* * *

See, the thing is, he’s not even sure he _can_ be crazy.

He hadn’t been injured over there. Hadn’t been shot, hadn’t been hit, hadn’t taken a fall or a tumble or had his head knocked around. He’d left because his time was up, and that was it.

And Reilly.

For the first time in eight months, he lets himself think of Reilly.

* * *

I think I’m crazy, he tells the doctor at his next appointment. And I think my house is haunted.

He doesn’t tell her, but he thinks it’s Reilly.

* * *

Three months in to his possible ghost roommate situation, he wakes up to fresh-baked banana bread in the kitchen. He opens the fridge, which he knows, just _knows_ , is two weeks too empty to find it fully stocked with organic, healthy foods he knows he didn’t buy. It’s not even a matter of not being able to afford it (he can’t), it’s just nothing he would ever buy for himself. He’s a pizza and beer kind of guy, not a – what even _is_ that? Coconut water and kale?

It’s nothing Reilly would buy either.

* * *

He starts paying more attention after that.

The shower comes on around midnight, but every other night; what he’d first passed off as terrible plumbing was clearly not, not when he notices that he’s buying shampoo and conditioner twice as often. Once, as an experiment, he doesn’t replace the empty bottles; that night, the sound of running water is accompanied by warbled, off-key singing. He doesn’t even wait for the first verse to be over before he cracks to door to roll the products inside.

The next morning he wakes up to pancakes. The syrup drizzles spell out ‘thanks.’

* * *

He wakes up one morning and it’s suddenly March – _March_ , like hadn’t it just been September yesterday? – and he’s been back in the States for one whole year. Only eleven months in the house, but one whole year of the good old US of A and everything, aside from the strange and strangely conscientious housemate, is as close to normal as he thinks is possible.

Sam steps out of the bathroom, air steaming from a shower – he showers in the morning, 8am – and pulls on the first cleanish pair of pants he can find (he really _does_ need to get a dresser one of these days. The pile system isn’t working like it did back in college). It’s Saturday. Saturday means no group and no appointments, and it’s started to mean no running either; Saturday means laundry and a book, maybe a movie, and pasta for dinner. He’s halfway through sorting the first of the piles (clean, less clean, and actually dirty) on his floor, halfway singing along to the song on the radio, when the man steps out of his bathroom.

“What year is it?” he asks in a clear voice, glancing around the bathroom with interest.

Sam prides himself on a voiceless reaction, spinning to face the intruder with fists raised and his back to the baseball bat; the door is farther away than he would like, but he’s had worse odds before. Maybe. The stranger is, well, he’s sort of huge – six feet at least but probably more and broad in a way that should look ridiculous. It doesn’t, it looks serious and so does his face, straight nose and square jaw and strong brow. He doesn’t hold himself like a threat, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t; if anything, it sets Sam’s hair standing on end in warning because he’s met people scary enough to not need the posturing and this man is probably, definitely, one of them.

“Citizen,” he repeats, voice friendlier now but no less urgent, “what year is it?”

It only makes sense to answer him. “2012,” Sam answers, hesitant, and wonders if there’s any way in physical law he could make it to the door before the man could; he’s got both a cell phone and a sidearm in the kitchen ( _why_ the kitchen, why not the bedroom, it should be the bedroom but his doctor said that he needs it to be _different_ , set boundaries). He can’t, not the way they’re standing, and the door is the only way out – and that’s the crux of it, really, because it’s the only way _in_ too and the bathroom had just been empty a moment ago and –

 “Thank you.” His voice is steady and serious as the rest of him, somehow unthreatening, but that just sets him further on edge because it takes a special sort of dangerous to remain as calm and confident and in control as this man seems. Rolling up the sleeve of his – it looks like a uniform, blue and white and it almost looks like something out of _Star Trek: the Next Generation_ mated with a full-tactical SWAT suit – uniform, he reveals a sleek metal wristband with a small screen and four tiny buttons. He presses the yellow one. “This is Rogers, I’m at the location.” Tinny voices respond, too garbled for Sam to make out, but the man nods in acknowledgement. “Got it. I’ll check in at 0800.” He’s not sure what happens, whether he moves for the door or the man merely remembers his presence, but not even a second passes and he’s the sole focus of a steady, serious gaze. “I know this is unorthodox,” he tells him, “but I promise, I mean you no harm.”

He’s managed to inch himself a whole three inches closer to the door, and as a distraction nods his head in the agreement he feels anything but. “Okay, because that doesn’t sound like a line or anything. No, really, definitely not out of Breaking and Entering 101.”

The man looks deeply affronted as he catches the implication. “I would never,” he begins, mouth opening and closing a few times in a loss of words before he tugs a black wallet from some inner pocket. He hands it over open, the gleaming gold badge on one side unknown in origin but otherwise unmistakable; Sam’s never been a cop but he’s seen enough procedural cop shows to recognize a police identification when he sees it, even one as odd as this. The badge is a golden circle with a stylized eagle clutching a star in the middle, all straight lines in raised relief, and the star is echoed in white across the chest of the man’s uniform. The equally mysterious ID card on the other side of the wallet is clearly this man’s, although his hair is slightly longer in the photo. “I’m a cop,” he confirms what he’s already guessed. “Sort of. I work for S.H.I.E.L.D.” and the name doesn’t ring a bell but he says it like it should, capital letters apparent. “I’m sorry for just dropping in on you like this, but we’re in pursuit of a fugitive that we’ve tracked to this location.”

Sam glares. “Oh no, buddy. I ain’t the criminal here.”

The officer’s – his said his name was Roger or something, he hadn’t entirely been paying attention to words so much as potential weapons – blue eyes fix on him with the most patronizing stare he’s ever encountered, including that of the legendary drill sergeant from basic. “Yeah, I didn’t think you were. Just that there’s one staying here.”

Maybe there’s still a bit of Rodney King rage left in him because he does not calm down at that; he bristles. “I don’t know any criminals either!” he glares, and Officer Roger considers the words a moment.

He reaches for the wristband again, pressing the blue button; it beeps once, then twice, then begins a continuous chorus of beeping that only lets up once he’s released the button. “How long you have lived here?”

Eleven months, one week, three days. He could count the hours too because sometimes he feels like that’s all he does, sit and watch the time he can’t get back roll by. “About a year,” he says instead, and he finally sounds as contradictory as he feels.

One finger hovers over the blue button again, considering, but he seems to be as done with the noise as Sam is because he does not press it. “And have you noticed anything... odd about the house?” Sam’s breath catches in his throat. “Strange noises in the other room, maybe? Objects going missing or being moved without you touching them?”

He forgets all about the baseball bat and his stealthy slide to the door, six whole inches closer now, because there’s a sick relief pounding in his skull and the strength leaves his body because he’s not crazy, he thought he was crazy (it doesn’t occur to him until later, much later, that this second man may have been of the same delusion). He’s so thrown that he doesn’t even think as he turns his back on the man to open the door to the living room. “So the place _is_ haunted?” he asks, question heavy with both hope and dread. “I thought I was crazy. Here,” and he shoves a small notebook, the one from the same drawer as his pistol, into the man’s grasp. “I kept a record of everything.”

The man flips through the book in silence, taking in the many pages of notes, meticulously dated and timed, with no expression aside from a tightening around his eyes. Minutes pass before he closes the book delicately and meets Sam’s gaze. “I regret to inform you,” he begins in that same quietly confident voice, “that you have a G.H.O.S.T.”


	2. Chapter 2

“A... a ghost.” He repeats it, more to himself, in disbelief – all this lead up, all this mystery, the man in his bathroom and the five months of not knowing and questioning his sanity every time he opened his eyes, all of that for someone to spell out, _literally_ spell out, what he already knew? It’s not that he’s disappointed, not really, it’s just that he was expecting a little bit more of a climactic revelation. A little less spelling, too, but what can you really expect from a guy employed by an equally acronymed organization?

The man shakes his head briefly. “A G.H.O.S.T,” he repeats, more slowly this time and with emphasis on the individual letters. “A Gene-Hacked Organism of Semi-Permanent Tangibility.”

Sam blinks, slowly, this time in confusion because what, just, _what_. “What?”

“A Gene-Hacked Organism of Semi-Permanent Tangibility,” the man repeats for the third time, turning the words over in his mouth before speaking them at an impossibly slow rate with deliberate pauses between them like it’s perhaps nothing more than a hearing problem that affects comprehension. As the silence and blank stare continues he blinks once, twice, like he’s waiting for Sam to catch up but he just _can’t_ right now, before falling back into a parade rest. “G.H.O.S.T. is a classification given to those who have, through either medical or technical interference, destabilized their DNA to allow for finite periods of invisibility and/or intangibility.” The entire recitation has something wholly textbook about it, like it’s a memorization from some police handbook from wherever the hell it is he’s from – which really, he should probably get around to asking about at some point, but somehow more important things just keep popping up.

“That sounds...” he considers the man before him, eyes flicking from him to the oddly silent apartment to the whiteboard on the fridge. _Don’t trust him_ is written in the same sharp handwriting as the notes on the baked goods or the mirror in the morning or the friendly reminders on the things in the fridge that he is allergic to nuts, do not eat. Sam forces his body to not react, and the words quickly erase. “That sounds ridiculously impossible.”

“Oh, it’s possible,” he corrects ruefully, “but most don’t survive the attempt. It’s generally considered very stupid to attempt to alter one’s DNA.” _Jerk_ appears the writing on the fridge, vanishing as quickly as it had come, and Sam feels marginally better knowing that his strange ghost roommate is both real and still present.

He tries to keep up with a conversation that he feels a few thousand years behind. “And, this... gene-hacking? It’s... illegal?”

“Of course not.” Sam’s noted only two moods from the officer: coolly confident or wickedly dry – this is the latter. “It’s not against the law to be stupid.” _You’re a jerk_ the ghost writes again in angry, bold letters, triple underlined for emphasis. “The fugitive I’m here for is wanted for... unlawful acquisition and sale.” Sam doesn’t catch the hesitation the first time, but he catches it the second, the stutter of silence between the theoretical and the factual like maybe even the officer is unwilling to discuss it. There’s a dynamic of some kind here, but he’s not sure he wants to find out. “Of over 17.8 billion credits worth of precious gems.”

“Unlawful acquisition and sale of prec-” Sam gives up the pretense, leaning around the officer to glare at the kitchen; the officer follows the movement. “A jewel thief. You’re a jewel thief?”

The air before the fridge shimmers and he barely dodges the dry erase pen as it flies toward him. “Fuck you,” and his voice is the first thing to solidify, sharp and sarcastic and just a bit of stereotypical New York in it that, honestly, he hadn’t been expecting because it just sounds so _normal_. His body quickly follows, more normal looking than the officer’s; he’s average height, maybe just at Sam’s five-eleven if not an inch or two below, and he looks slim but there’s obviously some muscle to him, if the way his crossed arms are any indication. Also unlike the officer’s space-age uniform of unknown origin he’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt and looks entirely at home in the logical world, invisibility aside. “And I made you brownies.”

“You’re a jewel thief?” he asks again, because he’d been fine sharing space with a courteous ghost he still sixty percent assumed was his own insanity, but he draws the line at an extensive criminal record. “Have you been stealing our food, too?”

Grey eyes roll to the ceiling in a stare that rivals the officer’s for utter disparagement.  “Don’t be an idiot, Sam,” and he’s not sure how he even knows his name, it wasn’t like he’d ever introduced himself to an empty room. For a brief moment, he wonders if the ghost has been in his medicine cabinet. “I’m a world-renowned thief on _multiple_ worlds. Do you really think I’d waste my time pinching some damn yogurt?”

He chooses to ignore the admission of guilt and the whole ‘multiple worlds’ thing. “So, you bought the yogurt?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Honestly, up until just a second ago, I didn’t even believe you existed.”

He staggers against the fridge, clutching at his heart and furrowing his brow. “I made you brownies!”

“And they were delicious,” he throws his hands into the argument, exasperated, nearly punching the half-forgotten officer in the chin; he watches their exchange, politely saying nothing although his entire body had tensed as the other man appeared. “But god damn it, Person Who’s Name I Don’t Even Know, delicious fudge brownies don’t quite make up for billions of dollars in stolen jewels!”

“It’s James,” he says like it explains anything, and Sam can’t help but notice the way he trips over the beginning like maybe it’s not what he originally meant to say, and wonders if he’s made a mistake in somewhat maybe half-trusting him, “and they were _vegan_.”

That draws him up short. Sam’s got nothing against vegans personally – he’s all for having your own beliefs and standing by them, hardly his place to tell you they’re wrong, he’d literally fought a war for that – but it’s just that the vegan recipes he’d had before had been, well, pretty obviously vegan. “Really?”

The self-assured smirk that settles across his face in response looks far more natural on him than any other of the wide range of expressions he’s displayed. “Yep,” he gloats, popping the final ‘p’ sound and pushing himself away from the fridge. He saunters across the space toward them, jabbing his finger against the officer’s pristine blue and white uniform. “And _you_ ,” the officer hardly seems fazed. “Are grossly misrepresenting my work as something far more sinister than it actually is.”

Officer Roger regards him with the same cool expression he’d first met Sam with. “Oh, so we’re acknowledging my presence in the room now?”

James scoffs. “Oh, like anyone could miss you.” Slender fingers walk up the officer’s chest to flick playfully at one of his ears; in an impressive display, the officer shows no reaction. “All huge and hulking in the corner there.”

He casually moves James’s hand away from him. “So you’re not denying your involvement in the unlawful acquisition and sale of over 17.8 billion credits in precious gemstones?”

“No. I’m just denying that any of it was unlawful.” And even Sam wants raise an eyebrow at that because ghost roommate – James. Maybe Jim, since it seems like they’ve been friends for awhile now – absolutely _oozes_ unlawful.

That patronizing glare is back, but the effect is somewhat lessened by the way that Officer Roger’s fingers are still loosely wrapped around James’ wrist. “Did you acquire 17.8 billion credits in precious gemstones?” he asks slowly, so slowly, the same tone he’d used with Sam that had made him feel like he was the most stupid creature on the planet.

“In the interest of accuracy,” James all but purrs, inching his way further into Officer Roger’s space. “It was more like 18.1.”

“Bucky,” he replies, voice matching the other man’s lightheartedness – there’s a fond undercurrent to his words, evidenced in the nickname and the way his smile tilts all the way up to his eyes, that has Sam thinking there is possibly more going on here. “When you take things that don’t belong to you, the technical definition is ‘stealing.’”

“Steve,” they’re face to face now, completely absorbed in the other, and Sam feels half like he’s intruding on something private and half like he’s about to witness a throw down Springer fight; either way, he’s uncomfortable. “When you do things that they haven’t written laws about yet, then technically it’s not illegal.”

“That’s a technicality, Buck,” and seriously, this is the most uncomfortable moment he’s ever witnessed; it makes his skin itch, makes him want to look away but there’s nowhere else to look and besides, he’s not sure he should turn his back on either of them. He’s still not sure what’s happening. “S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t really do technicalities.”

And James – Jim? Bucky? Sam can’t keep up – just laughs at that, unabashed and unconcerned. “Dumbass, listen to yourself. SHIELD,” and thank god they’ve finally stopped spelling it out. He wonders what took so long, like They (who are ‘they’ anyway? The capitalization seems fitting) intended to be called anything _but_ ‘shield,’ designing their name the way they did. If it _is_ even an acronym, it’s the most obtusely deliberate one he could imagine – SHIELD. They probably have some spiel about defending or protecting. “Doesn’t do anything _but_ technicalities.”

“Okay, _technically_.” It turns out the officer has a third mood: megawatt smile. Suddenly he’s not threatening, not even a little, suddenly he’s just a blonde guy with a dorky grin that Sam would totally (probably) have a beer with.

James catches his eye over the officer’s shoulder, and he doesn’t wink or flick them in any direction or anything noticeable, just meets his gaze and holds it. “Steve,” he says in that same careless voice, and it’s taken Sam an embarrassingly long time to realize that he’s been talking to the officer – Steve. Or Roger. He really can’t keep up – and not just giving Sam an alias of his own. When he has the man’s undivided attention, which he’s had since the moment he first entered the living room and probably since the first moment he’d appeared in the bathroom, he reverses their grip; now it’s _his_ fingers tangled lightly around the officer’s hand, _his_ fingers skating lightly down his wrist, _his_ fingers slipping beneath the edge of a sleeve and – “Nothing personal.”

He presses the red button on the officer’s wristband, and the man disappears in a flash of light.

* * *

“Oh god,” Sam moans once his vision has cleared for him to see beyond the flash of light – _flash like an explosion flash and he’s back there sand and heat and sky flash flash flash_. “You killed him.”

James/Bucky/apparently not a manifestation of mental illness blinks away the last of the spots across his vision to fix him with another withering glare. “What the fuck, Sam.” He gestures to the empty space that had previously been an officer of an unknown agency with terrible naming skills. “I just – you know what, no. Why is it always worst case scenario with you?”

“ _Dude_.” It worries him that he wants to smile – it worries him more that he is officially on the ‘no going back’ side of crazy, but hey, his doctor said to find a way to ease back into civilian life and he hasn’t shot anybody yet. “I’ve had a long day. Haunted house? Strange men in the bathroom? Jewel thief? Any of this ringing a bell?”

He snorts, but offers a hand to help pull Sam to his feet; he hadn’t realized he was sitting. “You and Steve are too much alike. All about the gross generalizations. First, I wasn’t _haunting_ your house, I was living in it. I pay rent. I cook. Come on man.”

“Fair enough.” The food _had_ been delicious, and Sam’s watched enough secondhand Master Chef in the past five months to know that’s not just his underdeveloped palate speaking.

That crooked, self-satisfied smile of his is back, briefly, before James – he’s just going to stick with James, even though it doesn’t suit him. It’s how he’d introduced himself, after all, and it’s normal, staggeringly so, enough to balance the complete un-normal, like so far from normal situation – pulls an empty duffel from beneath the couch and tosses it for him to catch. “Second, Steve wasn’t in your bathroom, he was just... well, that part’s complicated. And, right now, we don’t have time for complicated.”

He catches it without thinking anything beyond _projectile_ , but then he’s caught it and has time to catch the words that follow. “Yeah, not gonna fly. You better make time because I think I deserve some explanations.”

This time his eye-rolling is accompanied by a noise of total impatience, hands fidgety with haste. “Remember how I said it was nothing personal?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s totally personal.”

And yeah, okay, that’s one thing today that Sam _did_ see coming; he’s still not sure what the history between these two is, not sure he wants to, but there obviously is one. He matches the stare, unimpressed. “You don’t say.”

James’s manner has gone from exasperation to full-fledged anxiety, tossing a few items – they must be his because Sam doesn’t recognize them. For probably the first time, he wonders how he never noticed there was a person, an actual living _person_ , slowly moving in to his house right under his nose. “Point is, he’s going to be pissed. Do you really want to stand around and see if he’s pissed off enough to drag you in for questioning, or do you want to get in the damn car? I’ll explain on the road.”

He pretends to mull it over for a minute, pretends that he needs time to think even though he’d known his answer before the question had been asked. Today has been crazy and awful and unbelievable and it’s barely 9am but today is the first day where the world has fit right. “Fine. I drive, you talk.”

* * *

Head North, he says. He says a lot more after that.

“In about twenty years,” and they’re just past Baltimore, pulled over at a Shell station because Sam hadn’t known he would be needing a full tank on his day off. They have a bag of gas station sandwiches and a few bottles of Coke in the backseat as they lean against the trunk, splitting a carton of orange juice and a few tasteless granola bars before getting back on the road. Sam sulks over his Nutrigrain and thinks longingly back to the days when he hadn’t had a pushy possible felon monitoring what he ate – ‘I have a strong interest in keeping you alive,’ James had explained without explanation after slapping his hand away from the donuts. “The government is going to create the Strategic Homeland Intelligence, Enforcement, and Logistics Division on the urging of three military officers.”

He’s feeling just generous enough to ignore the whole ‘in twenty years’ thing. “What does it do?”

If he had thought the officer was capable of making him feel like a complete moron with only one stare, it was only because he hadn’t met James yet. “Intelligence, enforcement, and logistics,” he repeats dryly, eyebrow still raised and Sam regrets asking – he’s starting to regret getting out of bed this morning too, but since he’s apparently the only one not capable of time travel he’s just going to have to make do. “Seriously, Sam, it’s in the name.”

“It’s a dumb name.” He’s been thinking it all morning, but he blames the boring food for finally setting him over the edge into voicing it. James laughs at some private joke before finishing the juice, tossing the bottle in the backseat with the rest of their provisions. “Hey!” and Sam’s not the cleanest guy, he admits that, but there is literally a trash can _right there_. “Trash can.”

“Hey,” James echoes as he climbs into the passenger seat. “Recyclable.”

He doesn’t bother with a response until they’re about to pull back onto the interstate. James is fiddling with the radio while he finishes with the gas cap, and then there’s the only the faint hum of the engine for the three blocks to the on ramp. “Really? You want to get on my case for not recycling?”

“I have a strong interest in keeping the planet alive, too.”

Sam stops ignoring that whole ‘in twenty years’ thing and thinks, yeah, okay, maybe he does. That quiet acceptance is _too_ crazy, even for him, and he shoves it back down with the phrases ‘multiple worlds’ and ‘what year is it?’ to be dealt with at the earliest appointment a shrink can get him. “Well you break laws for a living, so I think I’m going to keep the moral high ground here.”

Much like he’d noted in the officer, James seems to have two expressions of both his face and his voice: sarcastic and scathing. This is entirely the latter. “You got your phone on you?” It’s one of the few things Sam had thought to grab – phone, wallet, keys. “Because I want you to Google the difference between ‘illegal’ and ‘unlawful.’ Go ahead. I’ll wait.” He may be perfectly willing to wait but the car behind them isn’t, honking a series of increasingly angered noises until the light turns red again. Sam can hear the man behind the wheel cursing through two sets of rolled up windows. “Right, driving. Give me your phone.”

“Nah, man,” but he hands it over anyway. “Data plans cost money.”

James glares again, easily unlocking the screen – Sam’s given up wondering how he knows things like his name and his password and his birthday (there’d been a cupcake on the counter and a card that sang when he opened it) – and clicking into the internet browser. “We’re on a family plan, motherfucker.” He should be surprised, but when he thinks back on it he can’t even remember the last time he’d paid his phone bill – maybe his doctor had been right, maybe there is some sort of depression going on here. He didn’t know how much he’d been disassociated from his life. “Unlawful: against or in violation of the law, _but not necessarily a criminal act_.”

Sam draws the line at an extensive criminal record, sure, but there’s clearly a situation of semantics here that he’s just not quite understanding yet and he strongly suspects the only reason he’s been even half as functioning as he has been is due to James. Also, they’re on a family plan. “I stand corrected. So you’re a jewel thief, but not a criminal.”

“Damn straight,” and James is back into sarcasm, winking over-exaggeratedly over the console at him. “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. In twenty years, three military officers form SHIELD. Intelligence, enforcement, logistics – spies. Short version, they’re spies who specialize in defending the planet against supernatural or superhuman threats.”

“I knew it!” he crows, drumming his hands against the steering wheel in delight; once again, he generously overlooks the ‘supernatural or superhuman’ part, this time in favor of gloating. “I called that! They have a motto about protecting people, don’t they. That’s why they have such a stupid acronym – like does anyone actually think they didn’t start with the word ‘shield’ and work backwards?”

James smiles, slow and easy, and braces his legs against the floor of the car. “I don’t know,” and there’s something in his voice, that hidden catch-trip like when he was talking to the officer, that has Sam wishing he had pulled over for this conversation. “Why don’t I ask them for you. Hey Sam, why’d you give your shadowy spy operation such a shitty name?”

He almost kills them both as his Corolla zigzags into the surrounding lanes, the chorus of honking only just drowned out by his startled shout. “The _fuck_ , man?” and he takes the next exit at near breakneck speeds. He doesn’t know where they are or where it goes, but he pulls over as soon as he can and hurls himself from the vehicle. “The _fuck_.”

James hasn’t moved. “Anyway,” and he yells to be heard over Sam’s one-part panic attack, two-parts tantrum in the vacant lot. “SHIELD HQ is located in Arlington, Virginia. I’m guessing at some point in the next twenty or forty years-”

“Stop saying that!” Sam croaks.

“-the neighborhood changes, gets a bit more shadowy spy operationy,” and Sam _might_ be mistaking the somewhat sadistic delight in the other man’s voice, but he doubts it. “And SHIELD moves in to the building your house will one day become. It’s only a healthy dose of irony that has mission control located over your old master bathroom.”

He can’t breathe. He’s fairly certain he’s never had a panic attack before but he’s completely certain he’s having one now because his heart is squeezing and beating in his chest and the world is going dark at the edges and the only thing he knows for certain is that he needs to sit down. He’s already sitting down. He needs to lay down and he does and it’s worse that way, he feels like he’s crushing himself so he sits back up and James is right there in front of him, voice soft, instructing him how to breathe. A bottle of Coke, slick with condensation, is pressed into his hand and he drinks on reflex alone.

“You good?” James asks him later, minutes or hours, he doesn’t know anymore; the only time he’s counting is ‘in twenty years’ and ‘what year is it?’

He coughs out something between a ‘no’ and a ‘fuck you,’ but accepts the hand being offered to pull himself to his feet. “I know you’re saying what I think you’re saying,” and James doesn’t smile, “but I want you to spell it out for me in very simple, very small words.”

His voice is still soft, surprisingly so, because James is a pushy and impertinent possible felon, but he’s also a great cook and a health nut and a bit neurotic about Sam’s well-being and he really doesn’t know anything anymore. “My name is James Buchanan Barnes,” he says slowly, “and I was born March 10th, 2052.”

He’s okay. He’s not okay. He’s gone crazy. “You’re from the future.”

“In twenty years,” and throat closes at the words but otherwise he’s okay, he’s not okay, he’s gone crazy. “Something happens to you, or you see something. You form SHIELD.”

He breathes in over a count of four, holds it for seven, lets it out for eight and repeats; the doctor had told him it was as effective as a tranquilizer with none of the narcotics. He’s never needed to try it before. “To fight monsters,” he says around an eight-count exhale, just because he’s still working on letting it sink in.

“To protect the planet from superhuman or supernat-” James shrugs, nodding his head slowly; he’s still moving in that slow, soothing way that makes Sam feel like he’s on par with a wild animal. “Basically, yeah.”

He’s not okay. He is so far from okay that he’s starting to think he hasn’t woken up in the past twelve months – is he in a coma? Is this a coma thing? Is he dead? – and frankly, he’s starting to be okay with that. “So which one are you?” The words are out before he can stop them. Not because he doesn’t want to know, he does, but more that, well, it just seems rude to ask.

James blinks once, slowly, before rocking back onto his heels with startled, barking laughter. “Yeah, you’re feeling better,” he snorts. “I’m... I’m none of the above.”

“So they occasionally track jewel thieves?”

His question is met with a rueful, regretful sigh. “No. I’m a special case – my grandfather, he was one of the founders.”One of three, Sam remembers. He’s another, apparently. He nods like he understands, because he can’t ask who the third is or where they meet or what happens. He _can’t_. “They’re claiming jurisdiction to ‘keep it in the family,’ you know?”

This line of questioning is a delicate tightrope at best, and Sam’s already feeling off-balance; he pushes on, only because he feels like the days he’s had, he’s owed this much. “Is that why you said it’s not illegal? Because of who you are?” He knows the answer without James speaking, knows it from the suddenly cold set of his face and the way his jaw tightens, just once, like he’s trying to swallow down his offense. “Sorry, bro, sorry-”

“Nah,” and he’s still distant, but only slightly; he takes the few steps to lean against the car, but his body language is relaxed and he continues talking after only a brief pause. “It’s a fair question. I’ve sprung a lot on you today. No, umm, it’s less the ‘why’ and more of the ‘how.’” Something of his confusion – this whole damn day is _confusing_ – must show on his face because James sighs again, his voice going soft and slow and soothing again. “Say I take a gem in 2082,” he begins, and what little control Sam had wrestled over his breathing vanishing into deep, heaving gasps. James passes over the soda. “Illegal, right?”

Sam chokes down the syrupy-sweet beverage with a bitter laugh. “I don’t even know anymore,” he manages.

“Yes, yes it is. Now say I bring it back to 2012 and sell it. Still illegal.” He thinks – maybe – that he’s following the story but his mind shorts out on the ‘back to 2012’ with a small, hysterical noise that he drowns in another sip of soda. James pauses until he manages to pull himself into silence again. “Here’s the fun little loophole that SHIELD really hates that I know: I sell jewels to their owners. Or, well, the people who will end up owning them by the time I steal them. Who only own them because I stole them from them and sold them... to them.”

It hurts, but it makes sense. He’s not okay, he can’t breathe. “That sounds like... I don’t even know the plural of ‘paradox’ but that sounds like eight kinds of them.”

“SHIELD _hates_ paradoxes,” James smiles like a pleased cat, eyes squinting and lips curling up at the edges. “Hence unlawful, but not illegal. They can’t exactly punish me for setting the timeline.” Sam nods like he gets it, smiles and ‘uh-huhs’ half-heartedly before heading for the car; he buckles the strap mechanically, but he can’t remember getting into the vehicle. _Time travel. Paradoxes. The year 2082._ He chokes out a breath that shakes as tenuous as reality - this can't be real. It can't.

It is.

“So...” he asks when they’re back on the interstate and Sam can form words again without choking or hyperventilating – his first attempts had nearly lead to tears, which James had politely pretended to not notice. It’s quiet now, even the radio muted, but the silence is calming. “How’d you get into the whole crime thing?”

James doesn’t look at him, and his hands tighten on the steering wheel; Sam’s familiar with gestures of avoidance, so he’s surprised when James actually answers him. “I was an orphan. Left the group home when I was sixteen, got whatever jobs I could. My – my pal was sick. We needed money.” He’d managed most of the words with casual observation, but the trip at the mention of his friend turned to a full out stumble and by the end his voice sounds... sad. Sam almost doesn’t want to ask, doesn’t need to ask because it’s how he talks about Reilly and how people in group talk about their friends and loved ones and he doesn’t mean to ask but he does.

“What happened to him?”

This time James does look, eyes tearing away from the road with restrained violence in his glare; his voice is flat and cold. “He got better.”

Sam doesn’t ask.

* * *

They’re settling in to some scummy, roadside motel on Long Island, just east of the city, when Sam finds the courage to ask more questions. “So what’s the deal with Rogers?” Barring that whole ‘in twenty years’ thing and that whole ‘on multiple worlds’ thing that he’s thought about and cried about and is now staunchly never thinking of again, the officer is the burning question of the day. Even if their history – whatever it was – hadn’t been obvious, James had mentioned something to the effect that he’d been dying to know ever since. And now they’re fed, it’s late, and James is rubbing his eyes like he’s sleepy – his guard is down.

“Oh, you mean ‘Captain America?’” James manages to convey the sarcastic air quotes with only his voice, but he echoes the motion with his fingers anyway; Sam rolls his eyes and does not give him the satisfaction of asking. After a moment’s staring contest, James flops backwards onto the double bed he’s claimed as his; furthest from the door, and he’s already rotated it so his head is in the corner. Sam wonders what sort of world exists in the future. He wonders if it’s anything like _Terminator_ , but then he feels like an idiot. “He’s a legacy, like me.”

His grandfather was the third founder, he means, because they’re obviously not alike in any other ways. “Why does he hate you?” he asks, because he feels like it would be rude to point any of this out.

“He doesn’t.” James scrubs a hand across his face again. “It’s complicated.”

He hates that phrase. “Why do you hate him?”

“I don’t.” The other man is a bundle of nerves and energy, rising from the bed to pace the room and then he’s back, dropping into an inelegant sprawl to worry a pillow between his hands. “Also complicated.”

“I’m confused.”

And James sighs, heavy and tired and old. “He thinks he needs to _save_ me,"

“Someone has to.” The voice doesn’t come from the bed or from him, instead from the door and he staunchly _does not want to know_ what sort of future exists that has James reacting like he does, instantly on his feet and dropped into a fighter’s crouch. Officer Rogers leans casually in the open-I-could-have-sworn-that-was-locked door, looking older and more tired than he had only twelve or so hours before, and he holds his hands out in what Sam can only assume is a non-threatening gesture. The thing of it is, though – the thing of it is though is that Rogers is huge, and he’s muscled, and he carries himself like he’s been trained in unarmed combat. Even an attempt at unthreatening appears, somewhat ironically, as very much the opposite, and the more he tries for it the more on guard James appears.

“Steve,” James greets him, voice gone flat again; he doesn’t drop his glare but he drops his stance, perching stiffly on the bed. “Eleven hours, fourteen minutes. You’re getting slow.”

The officer – Rogers. Steve? – cracks a tired smile before entering the room fully, closing the door and securing the chain in an easy motion that has Sam instantly on the alert. His skin gets that too-tight skittering feeling that it did back in the desert and he doesn’t blink because if he closes his eyes he worries he’ll be back there and damn it, he was supposed to be past this. “Yeah, well,” and all he does is drop into the chair in the corner, scrubbing a hand across his face, “I stopped for drive-thru.”

James lets out a soft snort of laughter that he quickly hides behind an ineffective glare; Sam pretty much gives up on ever understanding anything at this point because Officer Rogers – Steve – is apparently nothing more than a big dork with a personal desire to see James safe in custody. “You here to arrest me?”

The blond shrugs, no movement to rise from his chair, and slowly moves for the remote for the television. “You know I can’t.”

“So what,” and this time James smiles, charmingly crooked, and the frigid temperature of the room warms considerably; Sam wonders if his car is comfortable to sleep in, because he’s quickly suspecting that even if it isn’t, it’s comparable to here. This ‘it’s complicated’ dynamic of theirs is equal parts scary and sexual and, well, this hotel charges by the hour. He’s not saying anything, but he’s just saying. “Your plan is to just sit in the corner and guilt me into turning myself in?”

“Why,” Steve offers a weary smile of his own, “Is it working?”

Sam is no expert in, well, after what’s transpired today he’s starting to feel like he’s no expert in anything – Attracting trouble, maybe. Making omelettes, definitely. But not-quite jewel thieves and the future cops who hate-slash-don’t-slash-it’s complicated them? Not even a little. That being said, despite his complete lack of expertise (or even understanding, because he can fake a smile and an ‘uh-huh’ but now that the day is winding down with his mind it’s all bright flashes and neon lights spelling out three simple words into the empty void that should be ‘I get it:’ What. The. Fuck.) on the matter, even Sam can tell that yeah. It’s working. “Not even a little,” James says, but he flops backwards onto the bed and gestures at the television. “You wanna-”

“Oh,” and Steve flips a few channels on the television – surprisingly good reception, for a place that charges by the hour at least, but there’s no wifi in their room in unfair trade – until the familiar lineup of the Food Network settles across the screen. “Yeah. Sorry, Buck.”

He doesn’t want to ask – he _doesn’t_. Asking leads to answering leads to panic attacks and confusion and he cannot, just _cannot_ , sit through even another minute of ‘in twenty years’ and ‘what year is it’ without crying the sort of ‘everything I know is a lie’ tears that come fresh with a side of complete upheaval of reality. He doesn’t want to ask, doesn’t even want to know if they’re volunteering information. All he wants is to go to bed, pull the covers over his face, and wake up one day, five months, a year ago. “So I gotta ask,” and his mouth has clearly not gotten the memo, “what’s up with _this_?” This, he gestures, is the television and the hotel room and the easy banter and the completely synchronized look they share before turning to answer him.

“He’s,” James starts, and then stops to rub a hand back through his hair.

“They tasked me to bring him in,” Steve says, overlapping James’ start-stop, “because I know him best.”

“You know that asshole friend I mentioned?” and now they’re talking over each other, Steve starting a sentence only for James to intercept it halfway through and Sam just _can’t_ anymore.

When he holds his hand out, half a command and half just begging them to give him a minute to process, he’s surprised when they fall silent. “Five word sentences or less.” They both open their mouths and he holds the hand out again; obediently, they close them. “And one at a time.”

James counts the words out on his fingers, ticking down one two three four until the only one remaining extended is his middle finger. “We grew up together.” He pauses, considering what is probably a multitude of one word insults to punctuate his sentence with, but remains silent.

Steve rolls his eyes, either at Sam’s rules or James’ barely repressed language. “He’s my best friend. It’s-” when he reaches the fifth word he swallows whatever comes after, eyes shooting guiltily to Sam before he glances pleadingly at James. James takes pity on him and offers up his fifth and final word.

“Complicated.”

* * *

Somehow, he sleeps.

By ‘somehow,’ that is, he sleeps fitfully, finally passing out from shock and exhaustion to the dulcet tones of Gordon Ramsey screaming; Steve and James are still awake when he dozes off, and they don’t appear to have moved by the time he wakes up. They apparently _have_ though, if the coffee is anything to go by – a take-away mug from a local bistro greets him from the bedside table beside a muffin that looks (and smells) like cinnamon and cranberry. “Thanks,” he tries a smile it James’ direction. It probably ends up more like a grimace.

“Thank Steve,” James says around his not-drinking of his own coffee; he’s not even touching the mug, only glaring at it. The effect is somewhat reduced by the half-eaten lemon and poppyseed pastry beside him.

It’s all he can do not to roll his eyes like, alright. He gets it. It’s ‘complicated.’ “Thank you, Steve,” Sam says as brightly as he can manage, masking the patronizing grin he aims at James’ glare with a sip of coffee. It’s hot, near to scalding, but he manages to choke it back with the minimal appearance of effort (because damn it, he is stronger than this. He did _not_ survive a war to be bested by a sullen future twenty-something and a cup of café coffee). Steve and James are still doing their not-talking-but-gazing/glaring-soulfully deal, and really, this is all getting to be a bit much. “Why Bucky?”

They both turn to him, incredulous. “What?” What, like he can’t focus on something other than the completely bat-shit notion of time travel and other worlds and – the coffee roils in his stomach, threatening to reappear.

“Steve calls you ‘Bucky.’” It’s not a question, but it is; question, implication, and accusation rolled into one.

The sullen glare that had previously been reserved for the corner of the room that Steve occupies is widened to include his own, and Sam is willing to bet that he’s never going to get that pecan French toast again; a tragic loss, but one he’s willing to trade the upper-hand of information for. “It’s short for Buchanan,” and Sam remembers a middle name (he’d focused on that, in order to breathe – James is from the future but he’s named for the past, a president no less, and it had seemed a strange anachronism even given their conversation) from earlier. “James was my grandfather’s name.”

Sam hates the way he perks up at that, the hint of information that could help lead to this future friend of his, and all he knows is James and apparently military (there’d been a James Rhodes in his unit but he doubted they were related); it’s not much, but it’s something. “And your grandfather-”

Steve makes an abortive gesture, a hand cutting through the air as if to cut him off, but it’s too late to take the words back and Bucky turns on him, eyes blazing. “Was an asshole.” It’s not the vehemence that has Sam closing his mouth in apology, but the anger – hot in his blood _anger_ at this man he hasn’t met yet and whatever he did to put that steel in Bucky’s voice. “He came to my mom’s funeral, and even though she went my whole life never saying a word about her father, he stands there and sheds some tears and some bullshit words about how much he’s going to miss her, and then he looks at me and he says, I shit you not, ‘you’ll survive.’”

Steve’s jaw clicks from the force he grinds it with and Sam _knows_ that there is some way to go back in time, these two are proof enough of that, to undo this conversation. “We were eight,” he grits out, the two momentarily united in their anger, and it’s so easy to forget that they’ve apparently known each other forever, the way that they snipe. “And she’d been sick for months. We went to the orphanage after that.”

He hates this man, this James Barnes Sr., and hates that he apparently has to spend enough time with him to leave a legacy – Sam doesn’t hate many people, so it surprises him for a moment just how awful it makes him feel. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

“Let’s not talk about this anymore,” Bucky snarls, sinking in on himself and flipping on the television, volume raised to a bellow as a special report overtakes the station.

There’s a large, metallic flash of _something_ terrorizing the Diamond District, something that moves lightning fast across the grainy, shaking cell phone footage. All that can be heard is the confused yells that soon devolve into screams of panic as one, two, three different explosions all go off in the span of a second. Steve looks to Bucky and Bucky looks to Sam, and Sam doesn’t even realize he’s on his feet until his hand is on the door to leave and the other two men are flanking him warily.

It’s maybe a fifteen minute drive up to Midtown in the best of traffic, but right now the roads are a stalled out mess as cars have fought themselves to a standstill in an attempt to retreat; as it is, it’s maybe three miles of city block between them and the action and, well, they’re all in the business of running in some capacity. They take off at a dead sprint, Steve pulling ahead after the first block, and eighteen minutes and forty-seven seconds later (god damn, Sam wants to say, _god damn_ because he thought he could barely run a six-minute mile anymore, let alone three) find themselves completely and eerily alone. “It’s quiet,” Bucky says, and positions himself automatically at Steve’s right shoulder. “I don’t like this.”

Steve nods. His hand is hanging by his side like he’s reaching for something, a holster maybe, but whatever weapon he’s used to he’s not wearing today – they’re in jeans and t-shirts, all of them, a Sam thinks he might have a bottle opener on his keychain but otherwise, no. “Do you have-”

“I have _nothing_ ,” Bucky growls, gesturing to his casual, tourist attire.

“-an idea,” Steve finishes with an arched voice and an arch of his eyebrows.

They glare at each other, right in the street, and the air crackles with the possibility of sex or violence (or both, and there’s an image he never wanted to have) until Sam clears his throat pointedly. Twice. “I maybe have an idea.”

* * *

So it’s not much of an idea, and he’s pretty sure he got it from a movie (and not even a _good_ movie, but he’d watched a lot of shitty things before Bucky showed up and restricted it to educational channels only), but the thing is either a robot or a robotically-enhanced human and, well, that’s easy enough. Steve and Sam are crouched behind a car, the hastily-assembled device across the blonde’s lap – and okay, Sam was maybe a _little_ bit impressed with the way he’s said ‘EMP’ and both Steve and Bucky had managed to put one together with found items – while Bucky, complaining, rises to stand. “This is the worst plan,” he says, bouncing on his toes as the rampaging _whatever_ throws an NYPD police cruiser through a building. “Sam, I swear, if you got this from an episode of _Scooby-Doo-_ ”

“Oh my god,” Bucky groans, but then he’s through the car – literally, through it. There was a reason he was bait despite Steve being faster – and running full-bore toward the action. “I fucking hate you.”

Steve looks over at him, eyebrows pinched, and Sam just shrugs like he doesn’t have anything else to say on the matter. “It was probably not an episode of _Scooby-Doo_.”

The plan is embarrassingly simple, so he doesn’t blame Bucky the reaction: lure the thing away from everyone and chasing after Bucky. Run toward a building. At the last second, Bucky phases through the building and Steve uses the EMP to disable whatever device is giving the thing its strength. It hits the building, goes down long enough for all three to subdue it. Sam would feel ashamed of such a childlike plan (it was possibly an episode of _Scooby-Doo_ ), except that they had literally no assets to their name beyond what they could scrounge from the street – how that translated to advanced electromagnetism, well, Sam wasn’t from the future. He couldn’t speculate on the state of the education system seventy years from now.

The amazing part is, well, it _works_.

The thing – it’s a man, or close enough to be indistinguishable, but he’s wearing an exoskeleton-type apparatus of metal that fixes broad, shovel-like hands with ferocious claws over his own, hydraulic pumps lending him the strength to move automobiles – does chase Bucky with a strange single-mindedness (something to do with _whatever_ Bucky said to him when he’d gotten close). It chases him across the street and over cars, shouting deep, animalistic growls, and through the open door of a deli, right on his heels and all Bucky has to do it get it to the alley but it’s too close, _too close_.

Bucky tries to shake it, crashing through a window in a deliberate, tucked up motion before unfolding into a sprint, headed for the brick wall of the side of a building. The superhuman (and yeah, okay, Sam gets why SHIELD is a thing) follows, roaring furiously, and seemingly oblivious to the unpleasant moment that will be greeting him in five-

Steve connects one of the wires to the EMP. Four-

Sam bites the inside of his cheek until it bleeds. Three-

The metal of the apparatus flashes in the sun. Two-

Bucky goes soft and blurry at the edges before disappearing entirely, right into the brick of the wall like he never existed. The clawed hand shoots forward catching on something or some – one-

There’s a sickening crunch as the man runs headfirst into the bricks, a sound like a car crash and a stabbing all in one, and a gut-wrenching scream of pain as the wall shimmers, hazy and unfocused. It’s not the wall, it’s Bucky, he’s half-real and staggering down the alley, glitching in and out but leaving a very real trail of blood behind him. He flashes once, twice, three times before a very solid, very bleeding Bucky falls to the ground clutching the mangled mess of where his arm used to be. Sam can run a mile in six minutes but he’s moving in slow motion compared to Steve, a blond blur who makes it down the block and across the street in maybe seven seconds. “Bucky!” And in that moment, the way his voice goes hoarse and low with fear, it’s not complicated. Sam’s begin to suspect it’s never been complicated. “Buck?”

Sam’s on his cell phone when he drops to his knees beside them; Steve is fumbling for his belt to stop the bleeding but it all starts to feel like too little too late. “Do I call 911?” he asks, and it’s a legitimate question because Bucky, well, he’s not exactly the Average Joe of this decade.

“ _Hold on_ ,” is the only order Steve gives in response, and Sam reaches out automatically to lock his grip onto the other man’s forearm. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting to happen, but he gets it when he sees the watch-like mechanism on his opposite wrist – red button. Sends him back... to the future (okay, he’ll admit it. He’s been waiting all day for the opportunity to make that joke). He holds on to both Steve and Bucky for dear life, and then there’s a flash of light and a swooping feeling in his stomach and he has to close his eyes because everything is a painful rush of wind and noise and an uneasy feeling at the back of his neck.

When he opens his eyes, he’s in the year 2082.

* * *

“I feel cheated and lied to,” he tells Steve later – much later, one emotional arrest-slash-medical-emergency later and one verbal-dressing-down-slash-commendation later and about fourteen debriefs later – when they’ve finally been able to extract the man from the agent he wears as a uniform. When they first appeared in the middle of a large, chrome room (that, seventy years ago, was a claw-footed tub), they were immediately surrounded with drawn weapons and angry faces. Then came the rush of medics as they scooped Bucky up, a momentary pause where they glanced to a large, imposing man with an eye patch as if asking permission broken by Steve’s murderous glare, and rushed him away; he was still unconscious. It was probably for the best. Finally, when the excitement died down, Sam had been witness to the single most terrifying ‘job well done’ speech (delivered to Steve by that same man with the single eye, who was quite fittingly called ‘Fury’).

“What do you mean?” Steve looks tired and old in a way that he probably shouldn’t, but Sam can hardly find it in him to judge the other man; his boss had somehow managed to pin a medal on him while threatening his murder, his best-friend-slash-it’s-complicated had gone directly from surgery to holding cell, and they had been dismissed from the building with a heavily implied ‘we’re not done with you yet’ that had Sam nervous and he didn’t even work here.

All in all, he almost feels bad for teasing the guy a little. “I was always told that everything would be chrome in the future.” He gestures around them to the rather normal (by 2012 standards) apartment that was as vast a difference from the interior of SHIELD as night was to day. Steve laughs.

“I’m not fancy,” he explains like that wasn’t glaringly obvious.

“So what do we do now?” They’ve been very carefully not speaking about their situation for the last ten minutes, but there’s only so much not-talking-about-it Sam can take. He’s seventy years outside of his time and possibly already a criminal, and he has absolutely no idea if he’s ever going to be able to go home. It’s not a thought he enjoys.

That tired, aged look falls back across his face and Sam immediately regrets asking. “Well,” and Steve rubs a hand slowly across his face; for a moment Sam is fascinated by a lack of facial hair, because they’ve been in eyesight of the other for going on fourteen hours now and Steve hasn’t so much looked at a razor despite appearing baby smooth. “Tony promised to get a prosthetic by the end of tonight, so that’s good news.” Perhaps finally realizing, _really_ realizing, that Sam is literally out of his element, he breaks down the entire sentence (with none of Bucky’s pandering tone, which Sam is actually a little bit sad about). “Tony Stark. He’s a genius, and a friend.”

“Stark?” That’s a name that’s been all over the news back in 2012 – brilliant young multibillionaire up in New York, just opened up a weapons plant. “Howard Stark’s, what. Son? Grandson?”

Steve nods. “His son. Don’t mention it if you ever meet him.” Okay, yeah, Sam gets it – complicated. Nothing in the future is chrome but apparently it’s all very, _very_ complicated. “He’s probably smarter than his father, when he can be bothered to actually work on anything. He likes Buck though, so-” That’s the other thing they’ve been carefully not talking about: Bucky, his arm unsalvageable by even the future’s efforts and now locked securely in a SHIELD holding cell. Steve had spent the three hours since the surgery ended visibly wracked with guilt.

Bucky, who Steve had momentarily forgotten was a wanted fugitive that Steve himself had been tasked to bring in, who he had handed over with only a thought to save his life. If it had been Sam making the call, well, he probably would have made the same one. “Hey man, he’s going to live. That’s what matters, right?” It’s a hollow sentiment, even to his own ears.

Steve’s watch-thing beeps, ruining the moment (or maybe salvaging it. Sam’s platitudes were pissing even _him_ off); he presses the yellow button absently. “Rogers.”

"Steve," the face that appears on the inch-wide screen is a haggard-looking man in his early-40s with a ridiculous goatee and a vaguely familiar nose. There’s a smudge of something across one cheek, and dark circles that speak to more than one sleepless night recently. “Just leaving SHIELD now. I came over to give Barnes _a hand_ ,” and he looks so goddamn pleased with himself that Sam can’t help but smile; Steve groans.

“Shut up, Tony.” So this is Stark then, and he’s a far cry from the pompous face from the front page back home. “How is he?”

Tony pauses, eyes shooting down likes he’s trying to hide something, which is an answer in its own. “His arm works great, **obviously** ,” and there’s another smug smile on his face that doesn’t seem quite as convincing as the first one. “But he’s not going to Casper his way out this time. The arm is wired into his nervous system but it doesn’t have the same DNA – why am I even telling you this?”

“So he can’t bust himself out then?” Sam is vaguely following the logic – Steve said something about Bucky having altered his genes.

There’s a heavy pause. “Who is this? Who are you?” Gone is the light-hearted joking of earlier; Tony’s voice is as sharp as his gaze, and he cranes his neck in the tiny screen as if looking for Steve at the other end.

“I’m Sam.”

“Sam!” Tony says like they’re old friends, and around the headache of the day and the future and Stark the Younger’s mercurial moods he imagines they might be, someday. Not yet. “We’ve met,” he confirms, “or, rather, we will. This is weird. Time travel is fucking weird.”

Amen, Sam thinks. “Amen,” Steve responds. “So what’s the plan?”

There’s a tapping noise from Tony’s end that sounds like a keyboard, and apparently they still use keyboards in the future; Sam is equal parts comforted and marginally disappointed. “Fury is still in his office. If you’re going to sneak Sam back home, now’s the time.”

The word resonates in his chest, warm and loose and for all that he’s safe, for all that he’s a lifetime in the future and there’s so much he could _learn_ – Science. Art. Lottery numbers. – he just wants to go home. He wants to be in his own time, flawed as it is, where the air smells like pollution and doesn’t feel itchy against his skin; he hadn’t noticed it, not at first, not with the blood and the panic, but the air here feels _wrong_ , feels like a skitter-scratch against his skin, like every part of him knows he doesn’t belong. He wonders, unpleasantly, if that’s how Bucky used to feel. “I would _love_ to go home,” he tells Steve, hope coloring every aspect of the words.

He smiles; it’s faint, doesn’t reach the lines around his eyes, but it’s a step above the doom and gloom of five minutes before. “I’ll get you home,” he promises, and Sam believes in him with ever fiber of his being. Steve is a shadowy government agent for a shadowy government agency (that Sam simultaneous has founded and will found, and to quote the equally shadowy Tony Stark, time travel is fucking weird), but something about him is as trustworthy as it gets. “I have a plan.”

There’s a snort of unvoiced, unkind laughter from the communication screen at Steve’s wrist. “Does this plan involve getting Sam arrested, too?” No sooner are the words out than his whole face collapses, collapses like Steve’s frame and the air in the room and everything, every fragile construction of calm just _shatters_ – Sam thinks he voices a protest, but he can’t hear it over the immediate “Shit, Steve, shit, I am so sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“It’s okay,” Steve rasps, but it is absolutely, unarguably, _not_. “We don’t have time for-”

Forty hours ago, Sam was a recently-retired (he _hates_ that word, ‘retired,’ like he’s too old to be useful anymore. He’s twenty-seven, he just saw some shit. He’s got a whole lifetime left – and he apparently doesn’t stay out of the game for long, if the ‘founded: 2030’ plaque in the lobby was anything to go by) Air Force officer who was possibly, probably, insane. Less than two days and over seventy years later and if he’s learned any single thing at all it’s that there is time for anything. Time travel is real. He interrupts Steve with a panicked bark of laughter and that too-tight terror in his chest and he just wants to go _home_. “Steve’s right. We better just do... whatever.”

“Cameras are going down in ten,” Tony says. It sounds like an apology. “You have seven minutes. Sam,” he pauses; Sam can’t blame him. How can you say ‘nice meeting you for a second time years after the first time that is also the second time’ easily? At all? “See you around,” he finishes lamely.

“Yeah,” he replies, feeling very much like time in the parking lot that was one day and seventy years and a lifetime ago – He’s okay. He’s not okay. He’s not crazy. – and he can barely breathe but he is going _home_. “We’ll meet for coffee or something, forty years from now.”

Tony laughs. “I’ll hold you to that.”

* * *

Breaking in to SHIELD is laughably easy; as founder, Sam should be concerned that the apparent brainchild of himself and the elder Rogers and Barnes has devolved to something entirely inept. As one of the two currently breaking in, well, he can’t find much to complain about (He can though, is the thing. He’s having trouble breathing and he wants to go home but that’s _his_ name on the plaque and damn it, he’s always taken pride in things he’s done. Someday, some day in the past and the not-so-distant future, he is going to sit down and have a long talk with whoever ends up in charge of the security systems). The small part of his that kept its idealism even after the desert wants to say that something is just finally going his way – the realist in him chalks it up to whatever Tony did to the computers.

“Alright,” Steve says, and he’s suddenly looking at the room and not just in shadows or around corners; they’re in that same, openly-advanced room from their arrival, only this time it is significantly less crowded and well-lit. Steve stands awkwardly at one of the many computers, fingers resting unmoving against the keys. “This is it.”

There is nothing about Steve that would be considered small (except maybe his t-shirts, because seriously. Seriously? However complicated, he and Barnes deserve each other), but he stands folded in on himself, like he’s trying to disappear into the floor, and Sam wants to throw an arm over his shoulder. He doesn’t, but only because he’s not sure he could reach. “You take care of yourself,” he offers his hand instead, which Steve takes only to pull him into a hug. “And Bucky...” Words momentarily fail him and damn it, he should not be this choked up over some idiot he sort of only just met. He tries to imagine his house quiet and it just doesn’t fit, and he’s going to need a dog and a roommate and another on top of that, just to fill the space. “Take care of him, too.”

“Bucky takes care of himself,” comes the familiar drawl, and despite losing a limb within the last twenty-four hours he looks remarkably chipper – Sam’s not sure if it’s the lack of a cell he’s in or if it’s the staggeringly hot redhead who walks beside him (seriously, like knock-the-wind-from-his-lungs hot. He’d probably do something stupid like drop to his knees and worship her if she didn’t also exude the sort of lethal danger he’d only ever felt once. He was six and his cousin took him to see _Jurassic Park_ , and he’d made eye contact with the computer-generated velociraptor and been afraid to sleep for a month). “Besides,” and his voice is more clipped here, angry, but he’s maybe got a right to be; after all, he’d supported Sam through his parking lot panic attack. Sam can do him the same. “I’m not staying.”

Steve looks like he’s been run through a wringer, the joy in his eyes and the straightening of his spine from Bucky’s appearance shriveling with his words. It must be the sleep deprivation, because Sam sort of feels for him. “He can’t stay here,” the redhead says, and even her voice is attractive, god damn. “Here, he’s a wanted fugitive. In 2012, though,” and her voice is cool and level but there’s a smile that twitches the corner of her mouth that she’s not doing much to hide. “SHIELD doesn’t exist yet. He can’t be prosecuted.” The hint of a smile drops, tangling in the smallest hint of an accent that he swears wasn’t there before. “This settles what’s between us, James.” Despite being only a day removed from the practice, hearing the name attached to Bucky feels inherently wrong. “I pay my debts.”

Bucky smiles at her, genuine warmth in it as he ignores the radiating _danger, danger_ that surrounds her to duck in for a brief kiss – on the cheek, and yeah, Sam is really buying that whole ‘it’s nothing personal’ bullshit between him and Steve. He’s putting on a show like it’s going out of style. “Thanks, Tasha.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, voice sounding strangled and he just looks a wreck; despite his earlier performance, Bucky looks no better and Sam feels a tightness in his chest that has nothing to do with panic. It’s killing him to watch, he can only imagine what it feels like for them.

Bucky smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Steve.”

The future disappears in a flash of light.


	3. Chapter 3

He’s been back less than a week – quiet, boring neighborhood. Quiet, boring house made somewhat less quiet and boring by Bucky moving into the second bedroom. They paint it a shade of orange called ‘Whispering Peach’ solely for the name because the color is _hideous_ , but it’s better than stark white walls that remind him of a holding cell – when the neighbors yoo-hoo over the fence to invite him for the daily dinner offer. “And bring that young man of yours,” the woman – Elaine. Her husband is Frank – calls from the patio; Sam snorts out a laugh.

“We’ll be there,” he promises. It’s the first time in the whole year (minus one week. Alternatively, plus seventy years) he’s lived here that he’s accepted their invitation. “But he’s not _my_ anything. James, he’s-” and yeah, no, there’s no way he’s explaining this one. “He’s an old Army buddy.” Sort of.

Frank gives him one of those gruff, fatherly nods he gives whenever one of their service records comes up; he’d been a Marine back in Desert Storm, so he gets it. He was the first of the cul-de-sac to greet Sam by name and not rank and he’s never saluted him (except on holidays, Memorial and Veteran’s Days), and he never, not even once, treated Sam like he was broken. “He adjusting okay?” Through the sliding glass door he sees Bucky leap on the couch, swinging his metal arm through the air with controlled violence; on the screen, the little Wii person throws a perfect strike on the virtual bowling alley.

“Yeah,” Sam says with a smile. “Yeah, he’s doing just fine.”

* * *

They’re due at the McCovey’s in twenty minutes when there’s a knock at the door. Bucky’s in the kitchen making risotto – even though Elaine had insisted, no no boys, don’t bring a thing, we’re cooking for _you_ , Bucky’s been as charmed by her as she’s been by him and decided on surprising her with both the risotto _and_ a sponge cake. All Sam cares is if he gets to have some or not, because it smells amazing – and he shoos Sam to the door with a snap of a dish towel. Quite honestly, he’s expecting Frank or Elaine; he agreed they’d be over at 5:30 and it’s 5:11 now, but with the way they all but kidnapped him those first few months to get him at their table he wouldn’t put it past them to send an (armed) escort. He’s even, maybe a little bit, expecting one of those door-to-door sermons or a stray bit of mail or someone wanting to sell him something. Maybe it’s cookie season.

What he’s not expecting is Steve, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans and looking just the slightest bit shy. “Hey, Sam.”

“Look at you,” he all but beams, and the blonde perks up just a little bit to hear the welcome in his voice – yep, he can see the whole golden retriever thing now. Shadowy future government organizations aside, Steve’s a pretty decent guy and he doesn’t harbor any ill will towards him. “Using the front door like a normal guy and not just blipping into my bathroom.”

He ducks his head, suddenly bashful. “Yeah, uh, I didn’t come from SHIELD. I came from Stark Tower,” and he says it like it’s no big deal, like he hasn’t just come seventy years and over two hundred miles in his civvies to knock on their door when there’s a way that is literally instantaneous. It’s – well, it’s got Grand Gesture written all over it. “Actually, I... I sort of resigned.”

Sam chokes on the words he’d been forming in his throat and turns back toward the kitchen with a strangled yell. “Barnes! It’s for you!”

“What do you mean it’s for-” Like their first meeting, his voice is the first part of him that heads their way, rounding the half wall from the living room only seconds before the rest of him. “Steve.” Sam calculates how quickly he can make it to the garage when he hears the ragged emotions in his friend’s voice, the disbelief and the desperation and that rough sound that is either a precursor to a throw down fight or throw down sex and he wants nothing to do with either. “What, uh, what are you-”

“I resigned from SHIELD,” Steve says in a rush, the bundle of nerves winding him into the front step finding outlet through speech. The words trip over themselves on their way into noise, and it’s such a far cry from the competency he’s come to associate with the apparently former Agent Rogers that Sam doesn’t know what to think anymore. Except, of course, that he suddenly wishes he were very far away – maybe seventy years far away. “Officially.”

Bucky lets out a low whistle. “Captain America quit SHIELD?” Sam doesn’t speak their language, not yet, but there’s a whole lot of obvious unsaid there that has him starting the slow, quiet movements to freedom.

“Nah,” and Steve’s voice is just as nonchalant, but the smile that spreads across his face threatens to crack it in half. Hope, Sam realizes when he reaches the door to the garage. It was hope hiding beneath Bucky’s question. “But Steve Rogers did.”

“Well, Steve Rogers always was a shit-for-brains.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, grinning widely. “Good thing I’ve got you looking out for me, right?”

“You coming inside or not?” Bucky leans against the wall beside the door, welcoming him inside with a gesture; for the first time since he’s had it neither of them flinch at his arm, but Steve runs his eyes and then his fingertips along the forearm with an impossibly fond expression. Despite his appearance, all deliberately disheveled hair and carelessly confident posture, there’s something remarkably soft about Bucky’s face when he chases the touch with his own, tangling their fingers and leading Steve back to the kitchen.

“So,” Sam hears him ask as they disappear from his sight, “what’s there to see in 2012?”

“Well,” and the last thing he hears before he quietly closes the garage door is the happiness in Bucky’s voice. “First of all, there’s Whispering Peach...”

* * *

It takes Steve and Bucky an embarrassingly long time to figure out that it wasn’t their grandfathers who helped found SHIELD.

And Sam? He totally saw that coming.


End file.
